Dorianne Laux will judge the 2024 Marvin Bell Memorial Poetry Prize
Posted on August 24, 2023
It is with great appreciation and much excitement that we announce Dorianne Laux as our next poetry contest judge! Laux will select the winner, honorable mention, and finalists for our poetry contest this fall. Submissions will open on October 1, 2023.
Dorianne Laux’s sixth collection, Only As the Day is Long: New and Selected Poems, was named a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her fifth collection, The Book of Men, was awarded The Paterson Prize. Her fourth book of poems, Facts About the Moon, won The Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also the author of Awake; What We Carry, a finalist for the National Book Critic’s Circle Award; Smoke; as well as a fine small press edition, The Book of Women. She is the co-author of the celebrated text The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry. Her latest collection, Life On Earth, will be released in January of 2024. For more information visit https://www.doriannelaux.com.
Spotlight Stories with St. Louis County Library
Posted on October 10, 2022
We are thrilled to partner with the St. Louis County Library to host Spotlight Stories during the St. Louis Storytelling Festival! The 43rd St. Louis Storytelling Festival takes place from October 13th to the 22nd. The festival will take place at various venues throughout St. Louis County and St. Louis City. For more information, click here.
On Monday, October 17th december will co-host a reading for the Festival. Join us at 7 pm at the High Low for Spotlight Stories. Enjoy short readings from Vivian Gibson, Fred Venturini, Michaella A. Thornton, Ron A. Austin, and Jen Logan Meyer. You won’t want to miss these excellent St. Louis storytellers. Doors open at 6:30p; this event is free and open to the public.
2022 Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize Winners
Posted on August 26, 2022
december is honored to present audio recordings from our winner and honorable mention for this year’s poetry contest. These poems are featured in Vol. 33.1; to purchase or subscribe click here.
Lisa Cantwell — 2022 Winner, ravel
ravel
lately everything seems glazed i’ve taken
to cataloguing the days by how many
words i say out loud to someone other
than myself i need a recipe for sugarcoated
stuck in a rut should i search for answers
in today’s horoscopes collage all juicy bits
call it age of aquarius looking at the ocean
through a chain link fence i can almost
remember yesterday but what about
two days ago driving south along
the coast the pink pacific kicking breezes
supermoon rising in an ombré sky
i forgot about the moon for weeks
maybe that is a good thing last night
i cheated on ramen with mail order deep
dish pizza worth it this labyrinthine
ravel of hours are we at the eleventh
or the twenty fifth what if this is all there is
virtual survival rise zoom in out again
and again and tomorrow again
i am losing words before they reach the pen
John Sibley Williams — 2022 Honorable Mention, Pantoum for What Remains from Minidoka
Pantoum for What Remains from Minidoka
A hand-woven doll palmed tightly so the soldiers wouldn’t notice.
That delicate black tea set you buried under loose floorboards,
still unbroken. The nearness of stars caressed through a rough
aperture in the barracks roof. & all that rain seeping in to wet your dreams.
That delicate black tea set you buried under loose floorboards
like a body. & the body of your uncle, forever bent beneath plow & push.
The aperture in the barracks roof, where all that rain seeped in to wet your dreams,
opened the sky, some nights, to that old white farmhouse you’d never see again.
Like a body bent beneath plow & push, your future husband out there
emptying the belly of a bomber on his own country for love of this one.
How he opened the sky, some nights, to fire. How they burnt down the old farmhouse
in your absence. How you cannot stop returning to it, like a lost family name.
Emptying the belly of a bomber on his own country for love of this one.
Still unbroken, the nearness of stars once caressed through the rough aperture
of light’s absence. How you cannot stop returning to it, this Americanized family name.
& this hand-woven doll at 94 you still palm tightly so none of us will notice.
2022 Jeff Marks Poetry Prize Winners and Finalists
Posted on March 26, 2022
With much excitement, we announce the winners and finalists of our 2022 Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize. The poems we received for our contest were exceptional (as always) and our judge Grace Cavalieri picked amazing poems that we are looking forward to sharing with you in our Spring/Summer 2021 issue Vol. 32.1. In the meantime, you can check out the winners and finalists below.
Winner
ravel by Lisa Cantwell
Honorable Mention
Pantoum for What Remains From Minidoka by John Sibley Williams
Finalists
Pupil Paralyzed by P. Hodges Adams
Where the Redness Lives by Brenda Beardsley
Aubade in a Time of Stillness by Christian J. Collier
Damage by Sally Lipton Derringer
Spanish Web by Rebecca Foust
For Both Father and Frida by Kristina Moriconi
In Which I Consider Myself an Old Woman by Barbara Mossberg
The Vine by Alicia Rebecca Myers
Oral Presentation by Sarah Sousa
Papa Explains Why He Didn’t Go to the Vietnam Sit-in the Night They Dragged His Friends to Montgomery County Jail by Ariana Yeatts-Lonske
Thank you to everyone who sent us their work! And a huge thank you to our judge Grace Cavalieri!
2022 Curt Johnson Prose Awards Judges
Posted on February 7, 2022
december is thrilled to announce Laura Dave (Fiction) and Taté Walker (Nonfiction) will judge our 2022 prose awards. We couldn’t be more excited and full of gratitude that these amazing writers will select the winners and finalists for this year’s prose contest. Submissions open March 1 and close on May 1. See our complete guidelines for more information.
Photo Credit: Katherine Eskovitz
Laura Dave is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He told Me, Eight Hundred Grapes and other novels. Her work has been published in thirty-two countries and The Last Thing He Told Me is soon to be a limited series on Apple+ TV. She resides in California. Click here for more info.
Taté Walker is a Lakota citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and an award-winning Two Spirit storyteller. Their work has appeared in The Nation, Native Peoples magazine, Indian Country Today, ANMLY, and several anthologies, including Fierce: Essays By and About Dauntless Women. Click here for more info.
Grace Cavalieri will Judge the 2022 Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize
Posted on September 27, 2021
It is with deep appreciation and much excitement that we announce Grace Cavalieri as our next poetry contest judge! Cavalieri will select the winner, honorable mention, and finalists for our poetry contest this fall. Submissions will open on October 1, 2021.
Grace Cavalieri is the author of 26 books of poetry; the most recent is What the Psychic Said (2020). She has also written 26 plays that have been produced on American stages, including Quilting the Sun, presented at the Smithsonian Institution.
Grace Cavalieri has produced and hosted “The Poet and the Poem” weekly since 1977, first on WPFW-FM and now from the Library of Congress via NPR satellite and Pacifica Radio.
In 2019, she was appointed the tenth Poet Laureate of Maryland.
2021 Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize Winners
Posted on July 8, 2021
december is honored to present audio recordings from our winner and honorable mention for this year’s poetry contest. These poems are featured in Vol. 32.1; to purchase or subscribe click here.
John Okrent — 2021 Winner, Hold Tight
HOLD TIGHT
for Zach & Laura
It’s like those birds whose name we don’t know
who’ve picked this place in a million pines
in the middle of nowhere in the middle of night
to sit and sing where we can’t see them —
though it isn’t really singing that they do.
What is it? Unearthly tones
from their earthy throats keep time
from pressing down on us too hard —
ghostly metronomes. Of all the lives
I could have picked, I keep on
picking this one. The stars
are scattered buttons from a torn-off shirt;
everything is loosened
or removed. Those birds, and no other sound
save Zach and Laura pulling on their cigarettes,
ice ringing in my nightcap, whatever
makes those burrows in the yard.
No sorrow in the birds
but we hear it. Why say hurtful things?
I love my friends and want them near.
Lawn chairs in the dark.
I remember the benign belligerence of our drunkenness
in Buffalo, where the snow grew old around us
and we were young and lit in the trashcan-tipping night.
Now everything is different.
The night feels fragile as a windpipe.
The whole world dangles
from the roots of the trees.
Margaret Ray — 2020 Honorable Mention, Disaster A/version / Re/vision
DISASTER A/VERSION / RE/VISION
In one version, the evening is hot and I ride
my bike to the grocery for emergency
garlic replenishment, waiting carefully at each stoplight
until my phone buzzes in my pocket
in another, it rains and I take the bus downtown to meet Sarah
and my phone rings on the way home
Sometimes the dog at the corner barks as I pass
Sometimes I miss the bus and call Sarah for a lift
In one version I drive all the way to Fernandina
when I’m just supposed to go to the DMV on 39th,
and it’s on my way home that the call
interrupts my music, this could go on,
and it is always evening when I answer, always just before
dark as the phone rings, the word accident
from the tinny speaker always sharp as cut
glass, there I am, always
lifting the phone to my ear [in the fading
light], [looking
straight ahead into a small gust of wind]
Check us out in the “Friday Findings”
Posted on March 19, 2021
What a beautiful review/tribute. Thank you for recognizing what we’re trying to do: present “real life for most people.” That’s what december has always been about.
2021 Jeff Marks Poetry Prize Winners and Finalists
Posted on February 25, 2021
We are excited to announce the winners and finalists of our 2021 Jeff Marks Memorial Poetry Prize. The poems we receive for our contest were exceptional (as always) and our judge Carl Phillips picked amazing poems that we are looking forward to sharing with you in our Spring/Summer 2021 issue Vol. 32.1. In the mean time, you can check out the winners and finalists below.
Winner
Hold Tight by John Okrent
Honorable Mention
Disaster A/Version Re/Vision by Margaret Ray
Finalists
Voyeurs by Joshua Bottiger
A List of People Who Did Not Kill Me by Tianna Bratcher
Tower Block Twelve by Elena Croitoru
Mother and Son as Oyakodon II by Michael Frazier
Abecedarian on Hunger by Naomi Ling
True Story by Chloe Martinez
Cicadas by Saudamini Siegrist
My Mother’s House by Isabelle Walker
Back to the Body by Alyson Weinberg
Also Be Lost by Kelleen Zubick
Thank you to everyone who sent us their work! And a huge thank you to our judge Carl Phillips!
